First, before any conversation about linkbuilding, you must answer the question, ‘do links still matter?’

And to that I say what my partner always says, “Well, do any of the sites in the top of any competitive search have no links?” (The answer to that is no). And beyond that, what would happen if you stripped all the links away? What happens in a site migration if 301 redirects and URL mapping and backlink preservation does not happen? Why don’t you disavow every single link on your site and see what happens?

Thought so.

So, yes, we are of the school of belief that links do, in fact, matter. We just don’t think crappy links do anything, and that is what many people (SEOs, mainly) have ‘built’ for years.

I think the reason people say ‘links don’t matter’ is because they are either focused on a raw number, they are getting the wrong kind of links, or both.

Ok, now that’s out of the way and we agree that links do matter, how do you determine what you need? Do you look in Ahrefs at competitors and take the raw number and apply that to your marketing budget? We think the answer is more nuanced than that, and the good news there is that will save you money, it will give you a bigger ROI on your link investment, and it will enable you to prioritize and work smarter, not harder.

Any link campaign should have a component including a competitor analysis surrounding the types of links your competitors have, and it should also include a strategic plan around the types of links you ‘should’ have based on the type of business you are.

Your link acquisition model should pass this test:

  • Links that build brand entity
  • Links that are contextual
  • Links you cannot buy
  • Links not everyone has
  • Links that are important for your niche
A six-row evaluation matrix. Each row names a criterion — real site, relevant to niche, necessary for brand, a link you cannot buy, contextual, and unique — with a description of what to look for and a one-to-five scoring scale.

I’ve always believed that links are ‘votes’ from other sites, sending signals to Google, answer engines and other search engines that your site/page/content are legit. They are, to me, one of the most important forms of E-E-A-T.

I think the reason people say ‘links don’t matter’ is because they are either focused on a raw number, they are getting the wrong kind of links, or both. And this does not just include spam links, guest posts, PBNs or thinks that are egregiously ‘black-hat,’ but this applies to things like syndication, or paid posts, three-way links, buying links from marketplaces (even if the sites themselves are well-known and legit – looking at you SaaS companies).

So how do you get the links you need, the ones that will move the needle in terms of traffic, brand awareness, citations, and even revenue?

In the case of a health site, say telehealth, there are certain links your company should have to show your legitimacy in the space. Most companies can earn these over time, but if you are just starting out, or you have a team with a lot of competing priorities, you can often put this on the back burner.

Take this health site and look at the competitors:

Here is your site: We will call this Company A. Here is the competition: We will call this Company B.

Two backlink profiles side by side. Company A, the client, has Domain Rating 80, 5.9K referring domains, 149K backlinks and 12.7K organic keywords. Company B, the competitor, has Domain Rating 83, 29.1K referring domains, 1.5M backlinks and 71.4K organic keywords.

As you can see, the DR is rather close, but the amount of referring domains is one-fifth of the amount of the competition. Even moving a site by 3 DR is quite a challenge, but by the looks of it, you can get there if you work strategically.

When we build a campaign around this, we don’t go to the client and say:

What we don’t say

“They have 29K links and you have 6K so you need to pay us for 23,000 links and you can have the same results they have.”

Not only does that create a game around chasing volume or a number (where link quality will surely suffer), if your client does not have the same powerful links and mentions as their competitors, they lose out on more than just DR these days. They’ll also lose out on mentions and citations in the LLMs. So, our strategy involves more than that.

We dig into the links further to find out what their link profile is comprised of. I use the Competitor Analysis section of Ahrefs and their backlink comparison tools.

Ahrefs Competitive Analysis, set to referring domains, with a field for the target site and fields for competitors. Beneath it: 12,250 referring domains Company B has that Company A does not, narrowing to 201 health domains above DR 75, 201 .edu domains, and 14 .gov domains.

When we ran the base analysis without modifying anything, we found 12,250 referring domains that Company B (stronger site) has that Company A does not. Even trying to fill this deficit is super unrealistic and would take years.

Instead, we try to find the ‘money’ links, the ones that really drive value to a brand.

In this case, since it is a health company, we want all the health links that our competitor has. When you break this down, Company B has 201 health-related domains over DR 75 that Company A does not.

We also look at .edu and .gov domains because these easily fit our desired link profile. They are strong, trusted links that can’t be compromised or bought, so we like to get these. Company B has 201 .edu domains and 14 .gov domains that Company A can now make a plan to go and acquire.

Now, maybe this is simply getting listed as a provider, maybe there needs to be a linkable content asset created – either way, this is a good roadmap to getting our client success without getting some insurmountable number of links, or focusing on volume, whereby you’ll sacrifice quality every time.

Final Thoughts

Strategic, durable link building should be the name of the game, since this will also grow your brand entity which helps secure your place as a resource and recommendation in the LLMs. Instead of trying to game the system, or do the next quick-win thing, focus on quality over quantity, be strategic and surgical, and you can outrank and outgrow your competition, even if they have a massive head start.